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The Anti-Imperialist League 

Apologia Pro Vita Sua 



By 

ERVING WINSLOW 

Secretary 



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Published by the 

ANTI- IMPERIALIST LEAGUE 

20 Central Street 

BOSTON 



The Anti-Imperialist League 

Apologia Pro Vita Sua 



By 
ERVING WINSLOW 

Secretary 



Published by the 

ANTI- IMPERIALIST LEAGUE 

20 Central Street 

BOSTON 



til 3 



Gtf& 
Fublisbeff 



obstruct autonomy, produce excitement, and most probably dem- 
onstration. Ask that it is not done till they can get instructions 
from Madrid and say that if for friendly purpose, as claimed, de- 
lay unimportant." The Maine was sent despite these protests. 

In regard to the blowing up of the Maine, which was the subject 
of an ex ijarte inquiry by ofl&cials of the United States, the League 
has in its archives evidence from divers, who were not allowed to 
appear before the Court, that the explosion took place in the forward 
magazine, that what was considered the "upbent" bottom of the 
ship was really her protective deck, and that the condition of things 
under the wreck made it impossible that there should have been an 
external explosion. Under the circumstances, the refusal of the 
authorities of the United States to allow the raising of the vnreck 
is unfortunate while repeated efforts have been made by private 
parties to obtain permission to do so, — one member of the League 
having offered five hundred thousand dollars for this purpose. 

A duly authenticated record exists of the fact that arrange- 
ments were made for Aguinaldo's return to the Philippine 
Islands April 24, 1898, with the virtual assurance of representatives 
of the United States that if his alliance, with the large portion of 
the Filipino people who acknowledged his leadership, should result 
in the conquest of the Islands, it would be followed by their inde- 
pendence. The alliance was recognized by General Anderson then 
in command there, and there was no protest against Aguin- 
aldo's course in proclaiming the Filipino Eepublic July 3, 1898. 

A protocol of agreement preliminary to a treaty of 
peace was signed at Washington August 12, 1898. This 
protocol stipulated that the hostilities between the two coun- 
tries should be suspended and that the United States should "oc- 
cupy and hold the city, bay and harbor of Manila pending the con- 
clusion of a treaty of peace which shall determine the control, dis- 
position and government of the Philippines." The treaty of peace 
was not concluded or ratified until February 6, 1899, yet the 
League has testified to the fact that on December 21, 1898, Pres- 



ident McKinley ordered the extension of the United States sov- 
ereignty over the Philippine Islands, and military and naval oper- 
ations were thereupon instituted. This flagrant outrage has been 
the subject of some of the League's most notable publications. 

It was the painful duty of the League to expose the "marked 
severities" inflicted by the United States troops upon the Filipinos 
during the progress of the war of subjugation, said to be terminated 
by General Mc Arthur July 4, 1901, and for a long subsequent 
period. The work of the League in this direction, which is very 
thoroughly substantiated, was made very difiicult by the efforts of 
the Secretary of War to whitewash the proceedings in the army. 
The blame for the individual exercise of brutal conduct was not 
attributed so much to the persons perpetrating it as to the con- 
ditions in which they had been placed by their superiors, yet loyal 
citizens of this country fully supported the League in its contention 
that the army should be purged of those who committed such ex- 
cesses. 

The unsuccessful efforts at peace negotiations by the Filipinos, 
so haughtily rejected, were given wide publicity, and the League's 
endeavors to induce the Filipinos to lay down their arms when their 
cause seemed hopeless will be properly appreciated as time goes on. 

The dishonor of the means used to secure the capture of Aguin- 
aldo was fully made known ; aggi-avated, as it was, by every circum- 
stance of treachery and ingratitude. 

The ''■political conduct" of the war, in which it was openly ac- 
knowledged between the civil and military authorities in the Phil- 
ippines that measures which were indispensable for the suppression 
of brigandage should be suspended before elections in the United 
States so that the assumed pacification of the Islands might not be 
discredited, has been duly noted. 

The horrible methods of "reconcentration" which continued up 
to a period so late as the summer of 1906, the expulsion of men, 
women and children from their homes, herded together under rigid 
Burveillance, exposed to all weathers and without proper food, have 

8 



been described. These Weyler methods, which contributed so 
largely to arouse the fiery indignation felt against the Spanish rule 
in Cuba, are enumerated in great detail in the League's publica- 
tions. 

The treaty with the Sultan of Jolo, made by General Baker 
August 20, 1899, which sanctioned for a time, at least, the continu- 
ance of human slavery in the Sultan's territory, was denounced, 
while the arrangements by Aguinaldo's government, as a member of 
which Mabini had planned for an extinction of this slavery through 
compensation, was contrasted therewith. 

The League has not failed to point out the extravagance of the 
salaries paid to American officials of all grades out of taxes col- 
lected from the unfortunate Filipinos while their country was de- 
vastated by war and pestilence. Extravagant, too, have been out- 
lays for public improvements, many of them only for the benefit of 
the official class. A scandalous illustration is the foundation of 
Baguio, a Philippine "Simla," with enormously costly surroundings 
and approaches. A few Filipinos have been given high salaried 
positions, but the large percentage of the Philippine employees 
which has been boastfully enumerated as an indication of the liber- 
ality of the government, are engaged in poorly paid subordinate 
emplo}Tnents which no American could be found to fill. 

All along at critical periods it has been necessary to expose and 
to defeat as far as possible the persistent efforts to keep the people 
of the United States in the dark as to what was going on in the 
Philippine Islands by a censorship which not only applied to the 
Associated Press and to the newspapers, but was also exercised, as 
Mr. Atkinson asserted without contradiction, by tampering with the 

mails. 

The vaunted liberty which has been given to the Filipinos has 
been circumscribed by unusual and severe sedition and libel laws. 
The League has not failed to point out the conditions of discontent 
and unrest thus demonstrated on the part of the people and the 
lack of confidence in the security of their position on the part of the 

9 



government. Any public exposure, even in private premises, of 
insignia of the Philippine Republic has been legally made an act of 
sedition. In the archipelago truth of a libel constitutes no defence 
for it. 

In 1904, a large and influential petition which had the cordial 
sympathy of the League was presented to the national conventions 
of both the great parties, asking for the incorporation into their 
platforms of a demand for Pliilippine independence. 

At a Congressional visit to the Philippines in the summer of 
1905, a very strong effort was made to confine investigations and 
hearings before the Congressmen composing the visiting group to 
economic conditions. It was only through the efforts of a member 
of the League who then happened to be in the Philippine Islands, 
urged and enforced by Senator Patterson and Eepresentative W. A. 
Jones, that two days' hearing was given to the pleas which the 
Filipinos wished to offer and which they did offer, individually and 
by representative delegations, in behalf of immediate independence. 
The record of this hearing, which took place in Marble Hall at 
Manila August 29 and 30, 1905, was published and vddely distrib- 
uted, constituting, as it did, a reasonable appeal for a national evol- 
ution under the controlling influence of the large class of intelligent 
and educated Filipinos competent to guide their countrymen 
towards a satisfactory and orderly government. In this connection 
the League pointed out the absurdity of the objections made to this 
course on account of possible delay and disorders in the adjustment, 
after the experience suffered by the Filipinos of benevolent assim- 
ilation by the United States which had cost them perhaps a million 
lives and the destruction of a great part of their property ; and the 
opportunity was taken also to make clear the absurdity of insisting 
upon a democratic foraa of government and the instruction of a 
whole people in its principles, while some other form of government 
might probably be much better suited to their character and genius. 

The irreconcilable racial prejudice of the American, far greater 
than that of the Spaniards, has controlled the relations between the 

10 



fullest liberty under an independent government and its disassoei- 
ation from the foreign rule would probably restore to it a host of 
adherents. 

Meanwhile, it is undoubtedly true that in their sphere the Protes- 
tant missions also suffer from a supposed identification with the 
authority of the United States government. 

Strong opposition was made by the League and its friends in 
Congi-ess to granting permanent railroad franchises. The immed- 
iate advantages supposed to be offered by them, in furnishing im- 
proved means of transport and communication, poorly compensate 
for the menace implied in grants of this character to the indepen- 
dence for which we contend. 

With similar arguments some patriotic Filipinos have themselves 
opposed the reduction of the Philippine tariff unless accompanied 
by a promise of independence, to warn off the promoters whose in- 
dividual gains would be increased by the removal of discriminating 
duties, though as they assert, there would be no advantage whatever 
gained by the people of the Islands at large. On the other hand, 
they do benefit by the remission now made to the Pliilippine treas- 
ury of the seventy-five per cent of the Dingley tariff collected on 
Philippine imports. 

It has been the proper and very special work of the League to 
make known that, instead of a frothy agitation for independence at 
the beginning of the session of the Philippine Assembly which Mr. 
Taft had predicted, the body settled to its work with zeal and de- 
corum and with admirable restraint and refrained till the very last 
day of the session from making its appeal through the mouth of 
Speaker Osmena in an address, impassioned indeed, but marked 
with the greatest earnestness and dignity. The action of the Assembly 
in voting an endorsement of this address was upheld all over the 
Islands by resolutions from pueblos, political clubs, and all kinds of 
organizations, and was supplemented by a similiar eloquent address 
made at Lake Mohonk last autumn, by Senor Ocampo, resident 
commissioner of the Philippines. 



12 



foreigner and the native. We are thus confronted with another race 
problem in the East added to that which confronts us at home. The 
dread of this united to the League prominent southern publicists 
who could hardly have co-operated with our northern membership 
on any other question. Many teachers in the schools, devoted to 
their pupils as they may have been, acknowledge that they have 
never crossed the threshold of a Filipino household and reject the 
idea with indignation. The social abyss has only widened in the 
course of years. 

"We have exposed the very great weakness of the vaunted school 
system. Insistence upon the use of the English language has often 
given to the Filipino teachers the daily task of acquiring the means 
of expression for the lessons of the following day ! It has been very 
difiBcult to secure competent teachers from the United States. Prom- 
inent among them is the gentleman who left his country for his 
country's good after fomenting a scheme for extracting gold from 
salt water! The Filipinos very largely prefer education in the 
church schools where religion is taught, while the United States 
sovereignty, which has been made to appear to the Roman Catholic 
voter at home as so friendly to his Church, is thus perforce opposed 
to one of its most cherished standards. 

The religious question indeed has been most effectively treated by 
the League. It never should be brought into matters of politics 
but the necessary rapprochement between the United States author- 
ities and the hierarch)^ in order to bring about the pajTnent for the 
friars' lands and for the use and injury of Church property, has 
been studiously made to appear by the administration as deserving 
the recognition and gratitude of the American Roman Catholic. 
Now that the money has been paid, it must be distinctly recognized, 
however, that any identification of the Roman Catholic Church 
with the United States sovereignty which might imply unfriendli- 
ness to the national cause is likely to increase the Aglipayan schism. 
The leaders of the Nationalist party, many of them devout Roman 
Catholics, have pledged themselves that the Church should have the 

11 



The Lea^e is now making an earnest, repeated demand for the 
passage of a resolution by Congress similar to the "Teller amend- 
ment" in the Cuban settlement, promising independence to the 
Filipinos, so that content and good order may be established in the 
Philippines and hopeful and legitimate progress be made toward 
the goal which is pointed out to them ; the only real security for the 
fulfilment of the pledge "the Philippines for the Filipinos/' 

The League has circulated during the past decade, more than a 
million-and-a-half documents; it has promoted many public meet- 
ings and has furnished much matter to the press, and material for 
debates to members of the Congress and to the representatives of 
nearly a thousand organizations in colleges, lyceums and schools 
throughout the United States. 

It is inexpedient to mention here the names of the many trust- 
worthy and patriotic Philippine correspondents of the League, or of 
all the Americaji visitors who have investigated for us and for 
others the conditions in the archipelago, separating themselves 
from official influence and thus penetrating to the heart of the 
matter. Testimony has been sought and given by such men as 
President Schurman, George Kennan, Professor Henry Loomis 
Kelson, Professor H. Parker Willis, Mr. W. J. Bryan, Dr. D. J. 
Doherty, Mr. Fiske Warren, Professor Frederick Sta'rr, Senator 
Patterson, Representatives Shafroth, W. A. Jones, and many others. 

Those who oppose the end which the Anti-Imperialists have in 
view may be divided into three classes, leaving aside that inert 
mass of our citizenship which accepts any existing conditions, not 
concerning their immediate well being, as inevitable and irremedi- 
able. 

The first class, the altruists, are, of course, as out-spoken as they 
are sincere. They believe that roads and bridges, sewers and docks, 
schools and missions, are vital benefits which make the demand for 
independence superfluous and vain. Why liberty, when you have 



13 



bread and circuses? The things are done. What does it matter 
how or by whom they are done? The despot is benevolent. He 
points out with complacency the "cleaning up" to his subjects and 
to mankind ! But, as Mr. Thomas Mott Osborne has recently said : 
"There are no places in the world so offensively and tragically clean 
as your prisons." Nothing can palliate the wrong we are doing to 
the Filipinos in hindering their own national development, how- 
ever slow it might be, through whatever social and political dis- 
turbances it might be brought about. The foreign graft is ab- 
normal and cannot be persistent. No foreign civilization was ever 
successfully imposed upon a people, and the longer the effort is 
made, the more certain and the more serious will be the upheaval 
which must follow when the nation claims its own rights. 

Those who believe that the predominance of the United States 
as a world-power is secured by our possession of the Philippine 
Islands, include the bureaucracy, the army, and navy classes, whose 
views and whose ambitions do not make for peace and are not char- 
acterized by any breadth of statesmanship. The proper influence of 
the United States, moral, commercial and social, is unchallengeable 
and unchallenged. The only serious threat to it lies in the retention 
of the Philippine Islands and not in our withdrawal from them. 
National power has been always undermined and will ever be under- 
mined by remote and alien colonial possessions, the easy spoil of an 
antagonist, ready as opportunity offers to turn against the sovereign 
who has kept them in chains. 

The third class, the class of exploiters, does not make itself so 
much heard, but it is probable that its influence against the cause of 
justice is the strongest and most persistent. It can not be con- 
verted — it must be attacked and exposed, with its grasping efforts 
after land grants, concessions and franchises. No benefit can be 
derived to the country at large from "possessions," but, especially 
if they were included within the tariff wall of the United States, 
they may become profitable to the few capitalists who despoil the 
land of its wealth, ever clamorous (and often thus successful in 

14 



destroying a native population), for the introduction of coolie or 
contract labor, the returns from which will alone satisfy their greed. 
Against this class appeal can be confidently made to those home 
industries which would be menaced or destroyed by competition 
with the products of such labor. 

The Anti-Imperialist League has faith to believe that in spite of 
all that has come and gone. Senator Hoar's prediction that the fall 
of the Eepublic would date from the seizure or purchase of the 
Philippine Islands may not be realized. As with an individual 
so with a nation, a new birth into righteousness may be accomplished 
through repentance and restitution. The atonement made in giv- 
ing back their independence to the Philippine Islands might purge 
the United States from that treason to democracy into which it has 
been betrayed and from which it has suffered at home by the reac- 
tion of foreign imperialism, in the assumption by the Executive in 
the last few years that the end justifies the means, that any methods 
of procedure, however illegal and violent, may be taken to bring 
about the object of its desire. 

The present programme of the Anti- Imperialists is simple and 
hopeful. With whatever degree of sincerity, independence is now 
found in the mouths of the responsible representatives of the Repub- 
lican party, the President and the President-elect. The Anti-Im- 
perialists must see that the hope of independence is preserved and 
strengthened ; not betrayed by an idle use of the name, to quiet the 
agitation of the matter in the United States and in the Philippine 
Islands; they must demonstrate the inconsistency of Mr. Taft's 
suggestion that the Filipinos may prefer at the end of a consider- 
able period a relation to the United States like that of Australia 
and Canada to Great Britain; they must expose the unfairness by 
which Mr. Eoosevelt tries to prejudice the situation when he urges 
the desirability that the Filipinos at the end of a generation should 
choose "to continue under the protection of a strong and disinter- 
ested Power, able to guarantee to the Islands order at home and 

15 



protection from foreign invasion"; they must protest against all 
measures tending to the exploitation of the Islands by private 
selfish interests, which would crush out the native Filipino and 
render him as incapable of voicing his desires as are the Hawaiians 
today; they must endeavor to secure at the earliest possible date a 
congressional promise of independence which will produce tran- 
quility in the Islands, warn off the speculator and vindicate the good 
faith of the vague encouragement now given to the Filipinos' undy- 
ing desire for liberty, and the hope and confidence of the Anti- 
Imperialists for the restoration of the Eepublic to the principles of 
democracy. 

Mr. Taft, it is well known, did not advocate the acquisition of 
tlie Philippine Islands, and as he has again recently asserted, he 
undertook the governorship only since certain conditions had al- 
ready been established there and at the very strong urgency of 
President McKinley. It would be a magnificent personal triumph 
if the President-elect, recognizing the proofs of capacity for self- 
government which have been exhibited by the Filipinos, and yield- 
ing to the logic of events, should during his administration take 
advantage of the opportunity afforded the United States to set the 
world a wonderful example and to win the gratitude of our 
brown brothers across the sea, by urging and securing Congression- 
al action to set them free, under tlie aegis of international 
neutralization. Who doubts that such a measure would be cordially 
welcomed by an overwhelming majority of his fellow citizens? 



16 



The Anti-Imperialist League 

Apologia Pro Vita Sua 



Ten years ago the Anti-Imperialist League was formed, with the 
immediate object of organizing an opposition to the ratification of 
the treaty of peace between the United States and Spain, signed in 
Paris December 10, 1898. 

This treaty was found chiefly objectionable in its third article: 
"Spain cedes to the United States the archipelago known as the 
Philippine Islands and comprehending thp islands lying within the 
following line (then ensues a statement of boundaries). The 
United States will pay to Spain the sum of twenty million dollars 
within three months after the exchange of the ratifications of the 
present treaty." 

The opposition to the ratification of the treaty would have been 
successful, as a sufficient number of votes had been pledged to 
defeat it in the Senate, had not the outbreak occurred between the 
United States army and the Filipino forces February 4, 1899. The 
action on the ratification of the treaty took place according to as- 
signment on the 6th of February, and two senators then changing 
their votes, as they stated on account of this outbreak, made it 
possible to pass the measure. 

Since that time the Anti-Imperialists's labors have been devoted 
to ameliorating the conditions and making reparation for the 
wrongs caused by the colossal blunder or crime involved in the 
efforts to subdue and retain under the United States sovereignty a 
people who had substantially won their independence from the 
Spanish power with which the United States was at war, and it 
should be observed that our final conquest of Spain in the Islands 

3 



was won by the Filipinos and the army and navy of the United 
States, acting as allies. 

Engaged in various phases of the movement have been a number 
of citizens of the United States of a quality and consideration never 
enlisted in opposition to the policies of any administration or series 
of administrations. Among those who have taken a more or less 
active part during the last decade in urging a promise or pledge of 
independence to the Philippine Islands have been : 

Two ex-Presidents of the United States — Benjamin Harrison and 
Grover Cleveland; 

Many former cabinet officers, including George S. Boutwell, John 
Sherman, John G. Carlisle, Hoke Smith, and Carl Schurz; 

United States Senators, such as Edmunds, Hoar, Morrill, 
Wellington, Money, Bacon, Caffery, Henderson, Carmack, Petti- 
grew, Towne, Mason, Tillman, Newlands and Turner; 

Governors of states, Larrabee, Lind, Boies, Pingree, Garvin, 
McCullough, and others; 

Eepresentatives McCall, Fleming, Burgess, Slayden, "Williams, 
Clark, W. A. Jones, Lentz, Green, Shafroth, Johnson, and many 
more; 

Presidents of universities and colleges and a multitude of their 
officials, including Charles W. Eliot, Charles Eliot Norton, David 
Starr Jordan, Henry Wade Eogers, Edwin A. Alderman, George C. 
Chase, G. Stanley Hall, Henry Churchill King, W. G. Sumner, 
J. G. Schurman, W. H. P. Faunce, Alexander Agassiz, G. H. 
Palmer, F. W. Taussig, Jacques Loeb, W. T. Sedgwick ; 

Ecclesiastics by hundreds, as Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishops Ire- 
land, Farley, Ryan, Bishops Potter, Spalding, McVickar, Williams, 
Hall, Conaty, Codman, Brewster, Huntington, Burgess, Whitehead, 
O'Connell, O'Donoghue, Beavon, Vinton, O'Reilley, McQuaid, and 
other clergy including Eev. Morgan Dix, T. L. Cuyler, C. H. Park- 
hurst, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, W. E. Huntington and E. W. Donald ; 

Chief justices of many states, judges, and lawyers; in their num- 
ber George Gray, Wayne MacVeagh, Eufus B. Smith, Thomas M. 



Shackleford, E. M. Morse, John H. Stiness, E. M. Shepard, Charles 
S. Hamlin, Moorfield Storey, Judson Harmon; 

More than one hundred and fifty thousand citizens of the United 
States, reckoning among them Andrew Carnegie, Charles Francis 
Adams, J. J. Valentine, Felix Adler, George Foster Peabody, 
George F. Seward, Eobert C. Ogden, Herbert Welsh, Robert Fulton 
Cutting, Jane Addams, Honore Palmer, Edwin Gould, William J. 
Palmer, Samuel L. Clemens, Edw^ard Atkinson, E. Pretorius, Ed- 
win Burritt Smith, Herman Von Hoist, Patrick A. Collins, Horace 
White, William Dean Howells, H. B. Nicholas, E. W. Gilder, 
Charles F. Lummis, C. E. S. Wood, Isador Strauss, Samuel Bowles 
and Josephine Shaw Lowell. 

Testimony to the value of the work of the Anti-Imperialist 
League by members of the party which it has been called upon to 
oppose has not been lacking. At a meeting with a small group of 
Anti-Imperialists Mr. Taft voluntarily stated that the League had 
done a good work by its critical attitude, in giving the Philippines 
a better and purer administration than would have been the case 
without its existence. A distinguished Eepublican official says: 
"It (the League) has served a most useful purpose in check- 
ing any abuse of power on the part of our own country." The 
President of the United States in his last message to Congress, 
while encouraging the hope of Philippine independence within one 
generation instead of the two or three which was the former mini- 
mum limit, has exalted the Anti-Imperialists from the classifica- 
tion of "traitors," to which they were inured, to that of "doctrin- 
aires" — or idealists — which, despite its intent, is the best possible 
tribute from one who reckons himself among the "practical men" 
whose scorn is so often the highest praise. 

The motto of the League during the whole of the last ten years 
has been "Fiat Lux," in the belief that the light of knowledge must 
finally bring the Eepublic back to its true mind and its righteous 
attitude. The League meets the conditions of the time with a 
definite programme, but in public as in private life no new depart- 



ure can ignore past evil doing, the very roots of which must be 
exterminated. No permanent structure can be reared upon rotten 
foundations. 

In a brief history of the League its labors are reviewed to uncover 
wrongs, the knowledge of which has been essential to leaven public 
opinion and to control the policy of the future. The records of 
this work are authenticated by trustworthy testimony and can be 
consulted in the archives of the League and in its publications. Let 
no hasty denial from any quarter hinder an inquirer from obtain- 
ing the full satisfaction which he may thus obtain. 

Wide publication has been made of the fact that General 
Stewart L. Woodford's successful diplomatic efforts had induced 
Spain to promise the grant of all the concessions demanded by 
Cuba, after a short delay to placate the Spanish people. Had 
the true state of affairs been made clear to Congress, as Secretary 
of State Sherman said, "we could have adjusted difficulties without 
the loss of our blood or treasure." 

President McKinley stated in his message of March 28, 1898, 
that the Maine was sent to Havana in accordance with the desire of 
our consular representatives. The then Secretary of the Navy 
within a very few weeks has repeated his assertion that the Maine 
was sent at the request of Consul General Lee; that she was to 
remain at Key West "till Lee should order her from Key West, 
which he did, and she didn't go till he did." The League has 
given wide circulation to the official record of Consul Fitzhugh 
Lee's testimony before the Court of Naval Commissioners on the 
explosion of the Maine, in which he testified that he had been in- 
foi-med that it was the intention of the government to send the 
Maine to the port of Havana and that he had at once telegraphed 
the State Department January 24, 1898, "Advise visit be post- 
poned six or seven days to give last excitement more time to dis- 
appear," and that tlie next day he sent another dispatch to the 
State Department, "At an interview authorities profess to think 
United States has ulterior purpose in sending ship, say it will 



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